When the thunder rolls…

Sometimes they need to be gathered in a big pile, taken to a place far away from schedule, and burned.

What a relief.

It’s a feeling akin to sorting through boxes and boxes of things you’ve been storing in case you need them, sorting and finding out who you were then, sorting and wondering why you kept that, sorting, re-filing and righteously enduring it all, sorting more and filing more and getting frustrated then finally giving up and just pitching the whole world of old stored things, newly filed or not.

In the lightness of being that follows is a freedom that’s easy to forget the taste of.

Cheryl Strayed (who is “Dear Sugar” on the website Rumpus) writes this and many other soul-jewels in answer to a 22-year-old’s request for advice that Cheryl would give to her younger self,

Don’t lament so much about how your career is going to turn out. You don’t have a career. You have a life. Do the work. Keep the faith. Be true blue. You are a writer because you write. Keep writing and quit your bitching. Your book has a birthday. You don’t know what it is yet.

and also this,

Most things will be okay eventually, but not everything will be. Sometimes you’ll put up a good fight and lose. Sometimes you’ll hold on really hard and realize there is no choice but to let go. Acceptance is a small, quiet room.

I love Cheryl Strayed as much as I love Annie Dillard. If you want to follow a good path into the former, go here.

My current favourite Annie Dillard quote is, ironically, about schedule – you can find it on the “Grist for the Mill” page on this site, in among other chewables…

Things repeat, like this wave. It’s a beautiful repetition, water answering and caressing the shape of the rocks beneath, over and over again. I watched and listened to this for hours. Next time I come the water and a strong wind will have shifted the rocks, and this wave will be gone. But of course there will be another just like it somewhere.

I’m back in the studio now, eschewing lists in favour of hunting love and surprise with my Curious, which is the only way to get anywhere at all, really. It’s a great deal easier, now, to say to my various rages, “Go lie down & sleep while I work. Stay.”

So many lights came back on while I lay there like a walrus that I get exactly where I’m going, which is right here and nowhere else.

On the second morning I woke to thunder. It rumbled into my chest like laughter and stirred up all the trees in anticipation of storm. The kingfishers whipped past, the seagulls coughed and cried CHANGE COMING and rose high into the clouds, surfing crazy wind. Black and bruised clouds sat heavy and crashing on the southwest horizon, and in the twenty minutes it took for them to hit the Bothy, I had tucked myself, peaceful and still sun-warm, inside.

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Chalk Horse, 2014; 48″sq, acrylic and mixed media on canvas.

Round One – 36″ Sold.

underdrawing for Round One

studio shot of Teacup

teacup Detail

Silence (detail), from Sea Hear, 2001

In the Sea Hear series from 2001 I used ocean imagery and whales to describe sound and memory

Hologram, from a series of paintings about music from 2001. I’ve always wanted to create a third image that exists in front of the painting, depending on the light & time of day. It worked in this one.

Opening selfie for the #Selfie project, 2014

detail from Hip Cello, 2008. Acrylic and china marker on linen

“White”32×32, Acrylic on white indian cotton.

“Totem”, for #Selfie, 2014 Sold

“Black”, from #Selfie 2014 42×42″ Sold

Backdrop from Circle Bar Studio – 8 years of drips

Georgian Bay roar

“Snakeroot”, 6×6″, graphite and acrylic on paper, 1999. Sold

6×6″, mixed media on paper, 1999 sold

reference for 2 paintings I’m doing for a Chinese New Year show

Playing with Tyler Wagler for Larry Jensen. Photo by Katherine Mann Jensen